ENGL 501A

 Studies in Bibliography (3 credits)

Instructors: Patricia Badir and Sian Echard
Section: 001
Term: 2

Making it Special: Collectors and Collecting in the University of British Columbia Library

This course is proposed in the spirit of resistance and celebration.  After years of trying to make various levels of the university administration understand just how special our special collections are, we have decided that it’s time to make a fuss.  There is no better time to do so as we anticipate the opening of the new Special Collections library next September. 

In this course, each student will be required to get to know one of the collections and its history – who made it; how it came together; how it ended up at UBC.

Because the library has such an eclectic mix of collections, we anticipate that the course will appeal to students from every historical period and many theoretical perspectives. We will offer them a range of experiences: they will read introductory material on the sociology of books (recent writing on the idea of the library, on collections and collecting and on bibliophilia); they will learn the basics of technical bibliography and print history; they will need to immerse themselves in the archives; they will need to conduct historical and biographical research (including, in some cases, interviews with librarians and living collectors); and they will learn how to turn archival discoveries into scholarly arguments.

Once the course is complete we plan to invite all of the students to resubmit their papers to us for consideration for inclusion in an edited collection that we will submit to UBC Press.  We have made preliminary inquiries and we are hoping that the press will respond favourably to the project.

Readings:

Here is a list of some of the major collections of interest to our students (there are many others)

• The Howay-Reid Collections (the nucleus of the existing collection)
• Wallace and Madeline Chung Collection (items on the exploration of the Pacific Northwest; the Chinese Experience in the PNW and the history of the CPR)
• The A.J.T. Collection on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Arctic Exploration
• The Hawthorne Fly Fishing Collection
• The William C. Gibson Collection on the History of Medicine and Sciences (including a first and second edition of Vesalius’ Anatomy)
• The Dr. Gerald W. Korn Obstetrics and Gynecological Collection
• The Malcolm Lowry Collection
• The Alice 100 Collection (editions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)
• The Arkley Collection of Early & Historical Children’s Literature
• The Historical Textbook Collection (largest collection of textbooks for children in Canadian Schools in Canada)
• The Norman Colbeck Collection of Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth -Century English and Ango-Irish poetry, belle-lettres and non-fiction (special interest in fine press editions)
• The A.M. Donaldson Robert Burns Collection
• The Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu Collection (including unpublished ms correspondence)
• The H. Rocke Robertson Collection of English Dictionaries (from the 15th Century on)
• The Louis Zukofsky Collection (including mss)
• The Philip J. Thomas Collection of Popular Songs
• The Angeli-Dennis Rosetti Collection (first editions, diaries, mss, financial records, correspondence of the Rosetti family and their circle)
• The Aguzzi-Barbagli Collection of Italian Renaissance books (including several incunabula)

Required reading will include academic and popular writing by both historical and contemporary writers : Jorge Luis Borges,  Roger Chartier;  Nicholas A. Basbanes; Adrian Johns; D.F. McKenzie, Alberto Manguel, Richard de Bury, Thomas Frognall Dibdin etc. etc.

Evaluation: presentation and paper